use real butter

Recipe: passion fruit bars

Happy new year, everyone! Did you make any new year’s resolutions?

As some of you know, I don’t do new year’s resolutions. I was wondering about this the other day. I realized that it’s not because I don’t do resolutions, it’s just that I am too impatient to wait until the first of the year to start one if I think of it on any other day of the year. That’s how I roll. In the past few months I’ve readjusted my goals a smidge. It’s always ultimately been about passion – the things I’m passionate about – but a little course correction was warranted. I think I’m on the right track.

This morning, Kaweah is happily romping about and disemboweling her plush toys with great gusto. Jeremy and I have eaten something sweet first thing in the morning to ensure that “sweet words” come out of our mouths all year long! I think it’s going to be a very good year. In fact, let’s all agree to make it so, okay?

geese at sunrise

And speaking of passion… this past week I got a small package in the mail from Todd and Diane – those two hilarious green thumb, photographer, videographer, practical joker extraordinaires. It was a box of precious passion fruits from their garden. I know, right?! Those two are freaking awesome!

a box of california sunshine in colorado

I began looking for passion fruit recipes to put these gems to good use when I ran across a blog entry for passion fruit bars. Passion fruit bars! That’s like lemon bars without the lemon, but with passion fruit. I’m a huge fan of lemon bars as it is, so I was all over the passion fruit bars.

cutting butter into the flour and powdered sugar

pressing the coarse crumbs into the bottom of the baking pan

In hindsight, I should have lined the baking pan with parchment because the bars didn’t release nicely. So if you don’t care about a clean release, then do whatever you want. If you want the bars to look presentable without mangling them, then line the pan.

six eggs to be beaten

add the sugar gradually

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: baked eggs

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. I plopped my skis down on the snow and looked up at the sky: blue bird day. I could see clouds of my breath billlowing out in front of me, slowly expanding and gently swirling up into the frigid air, illuminated by shafts of sunlight. A calm, brilliant morning – Christmas morning and perfectly silent. Ice crystals plastered every surface, glistening. I flared my nostrils and took a deep breath letting the cold crackle through my nose down into my lungs. I love winter.

plenty of good skiing to be had in the national forests

the winter sun throws long shadows

Jeremy and I spent the morning and part of the afternoon skinning up into the local mountains and then skiing back down. The wilderness was entirely ours. I love hitting a stride and going into auto-pilot while my mind runs in seven different directions, pausing only to exclaim “gorgeous!” at every view of the snowy high peaks that opened before us. At the end of the year it’s natural to take stock of what has been and what is to come. To reflect on the influx of people in your life and those with whom you have parted ways. Thinking about what was good and what wasn’t so good and how to improve upon it before starting our next lap around the sun. My quads burned and my sunnies were fogging up from the heat and sweat off of my face. It felt great.

At home, I made a small batch of Chinese potstickers for dinner and we had oranges as dessert. Simple is good. There were no presents, just presence… presence of mind and heart and the occasional belly rub (for Kaweah). It works for us.

glowing halo of clouds over james peak (sunset)

I’ve completed a few of those rag quilt projects over the weekend. My friend just had a baby boy and I swore to myself that I would not go to see him until I finished his baby blanket (incentive to really get it done). Now I can finally visit with him and he’s not even in college yet! Flannel rag quilts are so soft and warm – perfect for a December Colorado baby, don’t you think?

i hope he’ll love it until it’s threadbare

Buried in my stash of fabrics was a small metric ton of dark flannel left over from other projects which I decided to turn into a flannel rag quilt for our own baby. Labor of love. All quilts are a labor of love.

kaweah is a sucker for soft and cushiony things

Lately, I haven’t been much for cooking elaborate dishes. I don’t know about you, but when I’m cooking and shooting for the blog, I feel as if we are always eating something new. That’s fine except for one problem – we love a lot of the old recipes. I actually like how quickly I can cook something when I’m not shooting every damn step and washing my hands over and over and over again. In an effort to move toward simplicity, I have been drawn to recipes like baked eggs.

a little kale, bacon, cheese, and herbs never hurt anyone

finely chopped herbs mixed with the cheese

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: salted caramel ice cream

Remember my plan to keep things low key and unbusy this month? Well, that hasn’t happened so far and I think it’s mainly because I am not a low key kind of person. But whatever. As long as things get done and we’re all having fun, then it’s cool, right? And it’s time for those end-of-the-year type of activities like squaring away annual financial records, shipping presents to the niece and nephew, and our new year’s photo card to share with everyone. That includes you, dear reader. Go on and click over – the post will still be here.

happy holidays and let’s rawk the new year!

Then there is the business of the winners for Michael Frye’s book(s) giveaway. You know that a random number generator is just too pedestrian in the House of Butter (and it’s not truly random according to the resident astrophysicist, “It will produce a nice and uniform distribution of numbers that will pass most tests for randomness, but it’s a repeatable process given the same seed.” Thanks, Jeremy.) We are all about introducing as much randomness as possible. Jeremy started with ten three-digit numbers taken from the least significant bits of independent channels of a gravitational lens spectrum about half-way back to the Big Bang. All you need to know is that it is RANDOM. I then took the NUMBER mod NUMBER OF ENTRIES (=127) to determine ten semi-finalists from the comments. Then Jeremy assigned ten of Kaweah’s toys to a number 1-10, which I assigned to the corresponding semi-finalists in random order. Then the final act of pure randomness…

kaweah just wants a treat

the dumbbell!

the dog! (with an inadvertent paw at the fish)

jaws of death in action

ninja!

and finally the bone

Are you lost yet? The winners of the three Light and Land ebooks are: dumbbell = Michelle (mountains, Cascades), dog = Audra (Colorado/Hawai’i), and ninja = Emily (Ireland). The winner of the signed copy of Digital Landscape Photography is bone = Jason (Pripyat, Ukraine). Congratulations to our winners and I will email everyone about their prizes shortly! Thanks to everyone for sharing the places they want to photograph and big thanks to Michael for generously providing the prizes and his incredible knowledge.

here’s the paperwork

And now it’s time for something sweet… and salty. I made this back in August, but salted caramel ice cream has no season as far as I’m concerned. Caramel is timeless and salted caramel is sexy timelessness. Salted caramel ice cream? Um – sexy, timeless and indulgent!

place the sugar in a pan (preferably a wide one)

the edges turning brown and melting

**Jump for more butter**